In 2010, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Aichi Biodiversity Targets as part of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. Target 11 calls for ‘at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas’ to be conserved by way of ‘well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures’.

Land, and in particular agricultural land, is central to livelhoods in rural Zambia. Zambia is characterised by a dual legal system of customary and statutory law and by dual land tenure, with state land and customary land. A first wave of socialist-oriented reforms took place after independence in 1964, which abolished previously existing freehold land in favour of leasehold. Subsequent changes in government policies under the influence of structural adjustment programmes and a new government in 1991 paved the way for a market-driven land reform.

Socioeconomic shocks can shape future land-use trajectories. Armed conflicts are an extreme form of a socioeconomic shock, but our understanding of how armed conflicts affect land-use change is limited. Our goal was to assess land-use changes related to the 1991–1994 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus region. We classified multi-temporal Landsat imagery, mapped land-use changes during and after the conflict, and applied matching statistics to isolate the effect of the conflict from other potential drivers of land change.

Pastoralism – the predominant form of livestock keeping in the Horn of Africa – has always been a source of disputes and tensions in the region. So it is maybe no coincidence that precisely those countries with the largest cattle and camel herds should be the ones that have been suffering from prolonged armed conflict for years. This article takes a look at the closely interwoven aspects influencing conflicts in the Horn of Africa in general and South Sudan more specifically.

The Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT), was developed under the Committee on World Food Security as a result of collaboration among different groups of stakeholders – governments, civil society, private sector, academia. The VGGT is intended to provide a framework for responsible tenure governance that supports food security, poverty alleviation, sustainable resource use and environmental protection.

IDMC was one of 44 Palestinian, Israeli, and international organizations calling on world leaders to stop Israeli plans to forcibly transfer thousands of Palestinian Bedouins out of their communities in the central part of the occupied West Bank and into a designated township.

The first set of the land laws were enacted in 2012 in line with the timelines outlined in the Constitution of Kenya 2010. In keeping with the spirit of the constitution, the Land Act, Land Registration Act and the national Land Commission Act respond to the requirements of Articles 60, 61, 62, 67 & 68 of the Constitution. The National Land Policy, which was passed as Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2009, arrived earlier than the Constitution, with some radical proposals on the land Management.

Land degradation has been a major political issue in Java for decades. Its causes have generally been framed by narratives focussing on farmers’ unsustainable cultivation practices. This paper causally links land degradation with struggles over natural resources in Central Java. It presents a case study that was part of a research project combining remote sensing and political ecology to explore land use/cover change and its drivers in the catchment of the Segara Anakan lagoon.

Beginning in the mid-1970s through to the 1980s, Tanzania experienced a severe socio-economic crisis. In an attempt to turn things around the abating economy and accelerate economic growth, the government embarked on a broad range of radical policy, legislation, and institution reforms, which opened doors for foreign direct investments (FDIs) and further initiatives have been taken to create an enabling environment for investments to flourish in the country.

In Big Men, director Rachel Boynton has achieved a tour-de-force of documentary filmmaking. Taking a large, complex and much-contested phenomenon -- the oil business as it is conducted in under-developed countries such as Ghana and Nigeria -- she has crafted an edge-of-your-seat, character-driven drama that is also a clear and enlightening film about the global dealings behind petroleum, a crucial resource that touches everyone's life.

El caso aborda el tema de la resistencia campesina al avasallamiento de la tierra comunal por efecto de la implementación de un proyecto de desarrollo, el proceso de mercantilización y la visión de sobrevivencia comunal a partir del ejercicio organizacional del sindicato agrario de la comunidad San Antonio de la Cabaña.

The report analyses displacement in Coast region and identifies tensions over land tenure and poor land governance as key triggers, and obstacles to durable solutions. It provides examples of land issues underlying displacement caused by generalised violence, disasters and human rights violations, and establishes a close link between tenure insecurity and forced evictions. Disputes arise from competing land claims and incompatibility between formal and informal tenure systems.